No More Learning

fruhromantischen Asthetik (Munich, 1984), esp. pp. 99ff. 1
376 Notes to Pages 221-23
35. The full quotation reads as follows: "T'is evident that the more the per- sons are, the greater will be the variety of the Plot. If then the parts are manag'd so regularly that the beauty of the whole be kept intire, and that the variety be- come not a perplex'd and confus'd mass of accidents, you will find it infinitely pleasing to be led in a labyrinth of design, where you see some of your way be- fore you, yet discern not the end till you arrive at it" (John Dryden, OfDra- matick Poesie: An Essay, 2d ed. [1684; London, 1964], pp. 8of? ).
36. For some suggestions, see Hutcheson, An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, ? 6, XI, p. 78.
37. Hogarth, The Analysis ofBeauty, p. 61.
38. See the fitting formulation "factual fictions" in Lennard J. Davis, Factual Fictions: The Origins ofthe English Novel (New York, 1983).
39. Moritz, Vorbegriffe zu einer Theorie der Omamente.
40. Schlegel, Gesprdch iiber die Poesie, pp. I73ff.
41. See Georg Lukacs, Die Theorie des Romans: Ein geschichtsphilosophischer
Versuch iiber diegrojTen Formen derEpik (Berlin, 1920; Neuwied, 1971).
42. As an aside: the eighteenth century's claim that poetry is older than prose may have been motivated by the fact that, in poetry, the ornamentation that holds
the work together is recognized more easily than in prose, namely, as rhythm.
43. For an overview, see Gombrich, Ornament undKunst, pp. 4jff.
44. See Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, ? 48: "Zur Beurteilung schoner Gegen-
stande, als solcher, wird Geschmack, zur schonen Kunst selbst aber, d. i. zur Her- vorbringung solcher Gegenstande wird Genie erfordert. " An evolutionary theo- retical interpretation of this passage has been suggested by Niels Werber, Literatur
als System: Zur Ausdijferenzierung literarischer Kommunikation (Opladen, 1992), p. 45. One could also think of a systems-theoretical interpretation, which might concur even more closely with Kant's intention: gathering variety is the business
of genius; taking care of redundancy is the business of taste. Romanticism later re- jected "taste" because of its strong market orientation and insisted that genius by
no means acts arbitrarily, but is capable of self-discipline. Jean Paul, Vorschule der Asthetik, quoted from Werke, vol. 5 (Munich, 1963), pp. 56ff. , speaks of the Beson-
nenheit of genius. See also Raymond Williams, Culture and Society 1/80-ip^o (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1961), pp. 6i? . , with reference to Coleridge and Keats. Variation and selection, or operation and observation, might be distin- guished in this way as well. At any rate, the theory of art cannot be reduced to one of these elements. Upon second sight, the "schone Objektivitat der Unbesonnen- heit" (Jean Paul, Vorschule der Asthetik, p. 72) requires correction by the differ- ence-generating operation of the distinguishing observation.
45. On this late-nineteentli-century habit, see William James, "Great Man, Great Thought and the Environment," The Atlantic Monthly 46 (1880): 441-59, (against Spencer). Against this view (albeit with a different adversary in mind),
Notes to Pages 224-32
177
see Herbert Spencer, "What Is Social Evolution? " The Nineteenth Century 44 (1898): 348-59 (356f. ). See also, from the circle of the Prague Structuralists, Jan Mukarowski, "Das Individuum und die literarische Funktion," in Mukarowski, Kunst, Poetik, Semiotik (Frankfurt, 1989), pp. 213-37.
46. Consider, e. g. , computer-generated forms (in music or in painting).
47. On this and on the following, see Niklas Luhmann and Raffaele De Giorgi, Teoria delta society, pp. i87ff.
48. Giinter Ellscheid speaks of the hermeneutic significance of the displaced interest in Giinter Ellscheid and Winfried Hassemer, eds. , Interessenjurisprudenz (Darmstadt, 1971), Introduction, p. 5.
49. We deliberately bracket the question of whether this might yield a better or worse adaptation of the system to its environment, for this question is far less relevant than the older Darwinist theory assumed. All that is important is con- tinuing the system's autopoiesis--no matter what its structures may be.
50. This holds especially for living organisms. See Robert B. Glassman, "Persis- tence and Loose Coupling in Living Systems," Behavioral Science 1% (1973): 83-98. From the domain of living organisms, the concept of loose coupling has entered
the social sciences as a formula for the necessity of interrupted interdependencies.
51. See Chapter 5, above.
52. See Chapter 3, section IV, above, and section II of this chapter.
53. Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Geddchtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung undpolitische
Identitat infruhen Hochkulturen (Munich, 1992), p. 90.
54. See, e. g. , Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laokoon, oder iiber die Grenzen der
Malerei undPoesie, quoted from Lessings Werke (Leipzig-Vienna, n. d. ), vol. 3, pp. 1-194 (48fE).
55. We do not deny that there had been art even before one began to distin- guish in this manner. Without recourse to previous states, there can be no evo- lution. But distinctions that trigger evolution presuppose more than that.
56. For evidence of this diversity, see the contributions in Hans Ulrich Gum- brecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds. , Stil: Geschichten und Funktionen eines kul- turwissenschaflichen Diskurselements (Frankfurt, 1986).
57. "Frames" in the sense of Erving Goffmann, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization ofExperience (New York, 1974).
58. Famous in this regard is Claude Levi-Strauss, Totemism (Boston, 1963). 59. We shall return to this point in Chapter 7, below.
60. We are thinking here, of course, of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aes-
thetica, vol. 1 (Frankfurt/Oder, 1750), but also of a more general discussion, as, e. g. , in Diderot's Traite du beau.
61. See section II of this chapter.
62. On sources from late antiquity, see Wilhelm Perpeet, Asthetik im Mitte- lalter (Freiburg, 1977), esp. pp. 38ff. (on Augustine).
3 7 8 Notes to Pages 232-35
63. The formulation is from Odoh von St. Emeran (emphasis by N. L. ), quoted from Rosario Assunto, Die Theorie des Schonen im Mittelalter (Cologne, 1963), p. 149. Again and again, we must point out, this goes together with a pas- sive notion of cognition that does not make but only receives distinctions.
64. On the development of this insight from Alberti to Palladio and beyond, see Robert Klein, "La forme de l'intelligible," in Umanesimo e simbolismo, Ar- chivio defihsofia (1958), pp. 103-21; Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age ofHumanism (London, 1949).
65. This is Sir Philip Sidneys formulation in The Defense ofPoetry, p. 9.
66. This happens long before the notorious querelle toward the end of the sev- enteenth century. See August Buck, "Aus der Vorgeschichte der Querelle des An-
ciens et des Modernes in Mittelalter und Renaissance," Bibliothique de I'Human-
isme et de la Renaissance 20 (1958): 127-41; Buck, Die "querelle des anciens et des modernes" im italienischen Selbstverstandnis der Renaissance und des Barocks (Wies- baden, 1973); Elisabeth Gosmann, Antiqui und Moderni im Mittelalter: Eine geschichtliche Standortbestimmung(Munich, 1974); Albert Zimmermann, ed. , An- tiqui undModemi: Traditionsbewufitsein und Fortschrittsbewufitsein im spdten Mit-
telalter, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, vol. 9 (Berlin, 1974); Robert Black, "Ancients and Moderns in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and History in Accolti s 'Dialogue on the Preeminence of Men of His Own Time,"' Journal of the History ofIdeas 43 (1982): 3-32.
67. See Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original ofOur Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Hutcheson begins by stating, "The importance of any truth is noth- ing else than its moment, or efficacy, to make men happy, or to give them the greatest and most lasting pleasure. "
68. These are Parsons's insights! --which occur, not accidentally, in the context
of his notion of evolution theory. See, e. g. , Talcott Parsons, The System ofModern Societies (Englewood Cliffs, N. J. , 1971), p. 27; and in more detail, Parsons, "Com- parative Studies and Evolutionary Change," quoted from Talcott Parsons, Social System and the Evolution of Action Theory (New York, 1977), pp. 279-320 (307ff. ).
69. On the situation in England, see Joan Pittock, The Ascendancy of Taste: The Achievement ofJoseph and Thomas Warton (London, 1973); on the situation
in France, see, e. g. , Siegfried Jiittner, "Die Kunstkritik Diderots (1759-1781)," in Helmut Koopmann and J. Adolf Schmoll, called Eisenwerth, eds. , Beitrage zur
Theorie der Kiinste im ip. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1971), vol. 1, pp. 13-29.
70. Karl Heydenreich, "Was ist der Zweck selbst werth," in Heydenreich, Sys-
tem derAsthetik (Leipzig, 1790; rpt. Hildesheim, 1978), p. 181.
71. In the context of elaborate reflections (which, however, fail to clarify the relationship between objecthood and the "adequate objectivity of the will"), see
Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt ah Wille und Vorstellung, vol. 1, ? 41, quoted from Werke, vol. 1 (Darmstadt, 1961), p. 296.
Notes to Pages 235-36
379
72. The efficacy of natural selection has always been disputed in the realm of sociocultural evolution, but without sufficient backing--e. g. , by arguing for a ideologically oriented selection, or simply because one was unwilling to accept "die fight for survival" and success as die arbiter of social evolution. Against these dubious arguments, others have attempted to establish the theory of sociocul- tural evolution on the basis of environmental selection. See, e. g. , Michael Schmid, Theorie sozialen Wandels (Opladen, 1982), esp. pp. i89ff. Systems-theo- retical reasons prevent us from following this trend, which runs into difficulties that we will have to address: namely, the problem of how autopoiesis can be combined with evolution.
73. Despite the provocative formulation, this insight is familiar. See, e. g. , G. Ledyard Stebbins, The Basis ofProgressive Evolution (Chapel Hill, N. C. , 1969), p. 117; Erich Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Impli- cations of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution (Oxford, 1980).
74. This holds for modern thought in general. Not intentions, but the un- conscious is the origin; or, not the unconscious, but the repression that makes an unconscious necessary; or, not the repression, but the sociostructural realities that trigger repression. In other words: their evolution is the origin.
75. See Gunther Teubner, "Hyperzyklus in Recht und Organisation: Zum Verhaltnis von Selbstbeobachtung, Selbsdconstitution und Autopoiese," in Hans Haferkamp and Michael Schmid, eds. , Sinn, Kommunikation und soziale Dif- ferenzierung: Beitrdge zu Luhmanns Theorie sozialer Systeme (Frankfurt, 1987), pp. 89-128; Teubner, "Episodenverknupfung: Zur Steigerung von Selbstreferenz im Recht," in Dirk Baecker et al. , eds. , Theorie als Passion (Frankfurt, 1987), pp.
423-46; Teubner, Recht als autopoietisches System (Frankfurt, 1989), esp. pp. 36ff. See also Werner Kirsch and Dodo zu Knyphausen, who build upon this idea in "Unternehmungen als 'autopoietische' Systeme? " in Wolfgang H. Staehle and Jorg Sydow, eds. , Managementforschungi (1991): 75-101.
76. Clearly in Chinese writing and its emergence from the practice of divina- tion. See Leon Vandermeersch, "De la tortue a l'achillee: China," in Jean Pierre Vernant et al. , Divination et rationaliti (Paris, 1974), pp. 29-51.
JJ. See Michael Hutter, "Die fruhe Form der Miinze," in Dirk Baecker, ed. , Probleme der Form (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 159-80; trans, as "The Early Form of Money," in Dirk Baecker, ed. , Problems of Form, trans. Michael Irmscher, with Leah Edwards (Stanford, Calif. , 1999), pp. 107-20; see also Hutter, "The Case of Money," in Richard W England, ed. , Evolutionary Concepts in Contemporary Economics (Ann Arbor, Mich. , 1994), pp. 111-36.
78. Of course, we are not questioning die high artistic achievements, e. g. , of Chinese painting or Indian music. Nor do we intend to look down on these ac- complishments from a European perspective. We merely point out that one can- not speak of evolution in diese cases, nor of structural changes heading toward
38o Notes to Pages 238-3?
an ever-increasing improbability. On die contrary, what impresses us in art forms of this kind is the constancy of the perfection accomplished. To be sure, there are developments in Chinese painting that could be interpreted as evolution--espe- cially the shift from a linear and distinctly ornamental style of contours to a spontaneous style that expresses the unity of the brush stroke and the painterly result. But one can hardly claim that such changes lead to the differentiation of a self-evolving art system. Rather, Chinese painting is an indication of what kinds of evolutionary opportunities reside in ornamental art forms. Apart from that, the exact dating of the "take off" of European developments is debatable, but only if the conceptual basis for such a discussion is sufficiently secured. I per- sonally consider the fifteenth century the decisive period. One must concede dif- ferences between individual European territories, which increasingly begin to consider themselves to be nations and distinguish themselves from one another. The mannerist style and Dutch painting are worlds apart--however, from the perspective we are advancing here, we are dealing with phenomenally different variants of one and the same process.
79. Particularly famous are the paradoxes ofJohn Donne, which point toward Italian influences (Berni, Lando, and so forth). See Helen Peters, ed. ,John Donne, Paradoxes and Problems (Oxford, 1980); A. E. Malloch, "The Techniques and Function of the Renaissance Paradox," Studies in Philology 53 (1956): 191-103; and Michael McCanless, "Paradox in Donne," Studies in the Renaissance 13 (1966): 266-87.
80. According to Gotthard Giinther, "Cybernetic Ontology and Transjunc- tional Operations," in Beitragezur Grundlegung einer operationsfahigen Dialektik (Hamburg, 1976), vol. 1, pp. 249-328.
81. One of the best analyses of this development is still the interlude in Max "Weber, Gesammelten Aufiatze zur Religionssoziologie, vol. 1, quoted from the 5th ed. (Tubingen, 1963), pp. 536-73. On the dissociation of art (poetry) from sci- ence in the sixteenth century, see further Gerhart Schroder, Logos und List: Zur Entwicklung der Asthetik in derfriihen Neuzeit (Konigsstein, Ts. , 1985).
82. On the situation in the seventeenth century, see Niklas Luhmann, Liebe
als Passion: Zur Codierung von Intimitat (Frankfurt, 1982); trans, as Love as Pas- sion: The Codification of Intimacy, trans. Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones (Cambridge, Mass. , 1986; rpt. Stanford, Calif. , 1998).
83. See, e. g. , Ellery Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree: Ideas ofNobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Princeton, N. J. , 1986); Claudio Do- nati, L'idea di nobilita in Italia: SecoliXTV-XVIII (Bari, 1988).
84. On the efforts to cultivate a specific certainty of judgment, see Richard-
son, A Discourse on the Dignity, Certainty, Pleasure andAdvantage ofthe Science of a Connoisseur, pp. 241-346. Some decades later, Hogarth rejects the concept of "connoisseur," which he finds arrogant and irritating. See Hogarth, The Analysis
Notes to Pages 240-4$ 381
ofBeauty, esp. pp. 26ff. , and his subsequent attempt to ground a theory of the vi- sual arts objectively.
85. See Baltasar Gracian, El discrete (1646; Buenos Aires, i960).
86. Insistence on difference is apparendy more important than an exact knowledge of criteria. The admission of the difficulty of judgment is often qual- ified by assurances of the following kind: "il est cependant tres assures qu'il y a
1
un bon et un movais goust. " See (Jean Baptiste Morvan), Abbe de Bellegarde,
Reflexions sur le ridicule et sur Us moyens de I'iviter, 4th ed. (Paris, 1699), pp. i6off. Similarly Roger de Piles, Diverses Conversations sur la Peinture (Paris, 1727), p. 37, after rejecting the imposition of having to provide a definition of taste: "La maniere dont l'esprit est capable d'envisager les choses selon qu'il est bien ou mal tourneV' Apparently, the notion of taste aims at the necessity of an (evolutionary) selection without being able to provide a criterion.
87. See the entry "gout" in the Encyclopedic (Voltaire).
88. This is why it is possible to bemoan evolutionary changes as a decay of good taste. A notorious example is Madame Dacier (Anne Lefebre), Des causes de la corruption du Goust (Paris, 1714).
89. Quoted from Juttner, "Die Kunstkritik Diderots (1759-1781)," p. 18.
90. Onthenexusbetween"taste"and"goodbreeding,"see,e. g. ,Anthony,Earl
of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks ofMen, Manners, Opinions, Times, 2d ed. (n. p. , 1714; rpt. Farnborough, Hants. , 1968), e. g. , vol. 3, pp. 1628". ; but for Shaftesbury, "good breeding" is no longer inborn but acquired (p. 164). See also Jean-Baptiste Dubos, Reflexions critiques sur lapohie et la peinture (rpt. Paris, 1733), vol. 2, pp. 334ff. , who further dissolves the concept ("le public se restreint suivant Fouvrage dont il est question de juger" [p. 336]).
91. For evidence, see Ernst H. Gombrich, Norm and Form: Studies in the Art ofthe Renaissance (1966; 3d ed. London, 1978).
$7
1. See Morris Weitz, "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics," Journal of Aesthetics andArt Criticism 15 (1956): 27-35; Maurice Mandelbaum, "Family Resemblances and Generalizations Concerning the Arts," American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1965): 219-28.
2. This is a tendency (albeit not an elaborated one) in the "institutional" the- ory of art, which investigates the practices and conventions of the art system (like the institutional theories of law proposed, e. g. , by Hart or MacCormick). See George Dickie, Art and the Aesthetic: An Institutional Analysis (Ithaca, N. Y. , 1974)-
3. With reference to social systems in general, see Niklas Luhmann, Soziale Systeme: Grundrifleiner allgemeinen Theorie (Frankfurt, 1984), pp. i82f. and else-
382 Notes to Pages 245-52
where; trans, as Social Systems, trans. John Bednarz, with Dirk Baecker (Stanford, Calif. , 1995), pp. I29f.
4. See Renate Lachmann, Geddchtnis und Literatur: Intertextualitdt in der rus- sischen Moderne (Frankfurt, 1990).
5. "Redescriptions" in the sense of Mary Hesse, Models and Analogies in Sci- ence (Notre Dame, 1966), pp. i57ff. See also p. 54, n. 65.
6. By contrast, Friedrich Schlegel points out that poetry is art as well (Werke in zwei Bdnden [Berlin, 1980], vol. 2, p. 155). The need to defend this notion shows that it is no longer taken for granted.
7. For a conscientious study that emphasizes the "philosophical" context, see Gerhard Plumpe, Asthetische Kommunikation der Moderne, vol. 1, Von Kant bis /feg? /(Opladen, 1993).
8. For the period after Adorno, see David Roberts, Art and Enlightenment: Aesthetic Theory after Adorno (Lincoln, Nebr. , 1991), p. 21: "Aesthetic theory can no longer claim a vantage point beyond art?
9. Paul Valery raises this question in Variete, quoted from CEuvres, Pl&ade ed. , vol. 1 (Paris, 1957), p. 1240: "Si l'Esthetique pouvait etre, les arts s'eVanouiraient necessairement devant elle, c'est-a-dire devant leur essence. " On the disappoint- ing fruitlessness of a philosophical aesthetics for die self-reflection of art, see also Eckard Heftrich, "Das asthetische Bewufitsein und die Philosophic der Kunst,"
in Helmut Koopmann and J. Adolf Schmoll, called Eisenwerth, eds. , Beitrdge zur Theorie der Kunst im ip. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 1971), vol. 1, pp. 30-43. Apart from being aimed at die romantics, this critique is primarily addressed to Goethe and Schiller.
10. We need not only think of Hegel. For illustrations see, e. g. , Friedrich Schlegel's Lucinde, quoted from Werke in zwei Bdnden (Berlin, 1980), vol. 2, pp. 5-99. esp. p. 88.
11. Rosario Assunto elaborates this point in Die Theorie des Schonen im Mitte- lalter (Cologne, 1963). See also Wilhelm Perpeet, Asthetik im Mittelalter (Frei- burg, 1977).
12. For bibliographical references, see Chapter 6, n. 66.
13. After the proliferation of print, one finds an extensive body of literature devoted to this issue, especially in Italy. See Bernard Weinberg, A History ofLit- erary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1961); Baxter Hath- away, The Age of Criticism: The Late Renaissance in Italy (Ithaca, N. Y. , 1962).
14. This is evident in eighteenth-century depictions of life in the cities (Lon- don, Paris) and in the aestheticization of country life.
15. With reference to the educational system, see Niklas Luhmann and Karl Eberhard Schorr, Reflexionsprobleme im Erziehungssystem, 2d ed. (Frankfurt, 1988); on die system of science, see Niklas Luhmann, Die Wissenschafi der Gesellschafi (Frankfurt, 1990), pp. 46$ff. ; on the legal system, see Luhmann, Das Rechtder
Notes to Pages 252-54 383
Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1993), pp. 469fE; on intimate relationships, see Luhmann, Liebe als Passion: Zur Codierung von Intimitdt (Frankfurt, 1982); trans, as Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy, trans. Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones (Cambridge, Mass. , 1986; rpt. Stanford, Calif.